


Dead Men Walking

by InkSplatterM



Series: Translations of Silence [1]
Category: Marvel (Comics), New Mutants, X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, a messy pile of emotions and zombies, after a fashion, shenanigans between comic plotlines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-10-23 07:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10715199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkSplatterM/pseuds/InkSplatterM
Summary: Doug Ramsey is back from the dead. He's not doing well, but he treads through every day, with all the languages of the world at his fingertips.Jonothon Starsmore feels like he should be dead. He's not doing well, at all, having gone back to his fiery ruin of a face.They Meet on Utopia, and forge a bond that could only be made when one person has too much language, and the other not enough.-------Wot do you want?, Jono asked, not stopping the movement of his fingers against the heel of his palm.The silence went on for a little too long.Doug raised an eyebrow, having seen the way that Jono’s forehead furrowed in confusion. “Telepathy doesn’t work on me.”Jono switched to American Sign Language, his movements rusty as he painstakingly finger spelled out “fucking perfect” at Doug.





	1. Past Resides in Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoldenThreads](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenThreads/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Moribund](https://archiveofourown.org/works/983325) by [GoldenThreads](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenThreads/pseuds/GoldenThreads). 



Everyone speaks on two different levels: what they say and what they mean. Doug could read both of these levels with an ease that, perhaps, should have been frightening. But he had become used to this dual layering of meaning, enthralled by it, really. It was not the norm from his old memories, this endless expanse of perception, but it wasn’t too much of a burden. Most of the time.

Doug wondered if anyone else knew exactly what they said on both levels of communication, and how they often projected it. Most of the residents on Utopia, for example, projected exactly how unwelcome they considered him. Their anger, their grief, carved hard and sharp expressions when they purposefully turned their faces away from him. There was a singular question, ‘Why couldn’t he have been someone else?’.

His focus shifted, and Doug’s thoughts snapped back to the present even as he teetered on the knife-edge of sensation. His team helped with that, holding his focus so he would not get overwhelmed _._ Warlock had a tendril resting around Doug’s ankle while the rest of him leaned over Amara and Dani’s shoulders. The New Mutants, tried so hard to try to include him and push past intrinsic distrust because of the nature of his return. Amara had accepted him fully, after the apology and going to dinner together out in San Francisco. It had been good. A stepping stone, perhaps, to all his friends accepting him in a similar manner.

Dani was speaking. Doug could read the tension under her words, cataloguing ways on how to integrate Doug back into the team while also keeping the dynamic they had only just reestablished. A balancing act; like being a mutant with no powers, but still on a team of mutants.

A rustle went through the whole team, shifting them almost as one to look up and over Doug’s shoulder, then back amongst themselves, the distraction dismissed as non-threatening. Half a beat later than them, Doug also turned.

There was a balcony up on the wall. It should have been an observational booth, but the entrance was without easy access. You had to know where to go to find it. The balcony was more a place for being away from people. Staring down from it was a tall, thin figure, wrapped in a green-beige coat, with arms crossed over his chest as he watched the New Mutants.

Jonothon Starsmore.

Doug’s mind kicked over to the file that he had read on him a few days ago. **Known Code Names: Chamber, Decibel.** In his twenties, the same age range as the New Mutants, but in the class after theirs, Generation X, because of how late his powers had made themselves known. Eighteen was the oldest that Doug knew for someone to express their mutant abilities. Most manifested when they were fifteen or sixteen, with a few being younger than that, like Rahne and Roberto.

The file had been arranged to present basic information first: **Name, Birth Date, Code Name, Former and Current Team Affiliations**. Then it displayed photos. Jonothon had three photos in his file, unusual, but they were needed to display variations of his appearance over the years. The first was of his current appearance: grey skin, blue lips with lines going from the corners of his mouth up to the far side of sharply carved cheeks, brown eyes, and barely tamed brown hair. The second: The same brown hair, the same brown eyes, but corpse-pale skin and under the aquiline nose was a gaping hole that went beyond the bottom edge of the photograph, with wires running out of the hole and into machines.

Jonothon Starsmore should be dead. Doug’s mind had screamed to a halt. Dead and buried, deep under the ground where he should be safe, be resting. But Jonothon wasn’t. He was walking and talking and living. He was living. A living medical miracle, an unemotional part of Doug’s brain supplied. Doug concentrated on that, walling up himself within himself, and scrolled down the page to the next photograph. It was similar to the second, but with bright flames that flickered in otherworldly hues of blue and orange filling the hole and blotting out the color of Jonothon’s eyes with the backlit glow.

 **Powers– Presumed Former: Bio-kinetic bio-nuclear psionic furnace. Displayed Abilities: projection telepathy, psionic blasts, concussive blasts, flame blasts.** Twenty seven other uses immediately occurred to Doug. Granted, many of those uses depended on what the limits of Jonothon’s powers were. That piece of trivia was not listed, and would have been useless in any case, given that Jonothon did not have those powers any longer. To all appearances, he was a de-powered mutant who had been spirited away by an enemy known as Clan Akkaba, descendants of Apocalypse, to whom Jonothon was also technically related. Doug was content with missing out on the adventures with that particular villain.

A particular villain that Jonothon now uncannily resembled.

Jonothon had not moved from the balcony, or from his observation. His stance was closed off, arms crossed over his chest, with his mouth and eyebrows creating frowns. The blue lines that bisected his face turned his lips into a mockery of a smile. He did not speak, but he did not have to, everything else about him said all that Doug needed to prompt a translation. [I am jealous of them. They are whole again. Why can’t my team have that?]

Odd. Doug tilted his head to the side as he contemplated that translation of silence. The meaning had the same emotional resonance as others on Utopia – sorrow, rage, envy – but it was not directed at Doug himself. Perhaps, he understood that Doug had not asked to come back to the living. It was different, a section of code in the intra-team relationships on Utopia that was out of step with everyone else.

Jonothon’s posture shifted. For a brief moment, Doug could swear that Jonothon was looking directly at him. He turned away though, haunting back down the hall and out of sight.

Doug turned back to his friends and their preparations for their upcoming mission.


	2. After the Age of X

Jono could really learn to hate these meetings.

Scott insisted that all the “graduates” attend, but the only people that it really impacted were the leaders of Utopia’s various teams. It was to keep tabs on who was doing what and where, but it seemed a little overboard. Or anal retentive, depending on exactly how pissed with Scott Jono was at the time.

Granted, Jono was pissed off with people all of the time. Didn’t need a reason most days.

Jono pressed his fingers against his palm, miming chord fingerings, while he “strummed” the air. He sat in a corner where he could have a good view of the rest of the room, but back behind everyone else so it wasn’t as noticeable that he had stopped paying attention to the meeting a good ten minutes ago. He was working on a new song. Not for himself but for Sugar, who had reached out to him. She needed to breathe some new life into her career, and singer-songwriter pop-rock ballads were in vogue. Jono would write ten of those in his sleep. Sugar was still able to make money in the UK, but the last time that she had any chance at international stardom was back when she and Jono were in the tabloid rags together.

It wasn’t his best moment.

Either way, a gig was a gig, and Jono would put out his best effort, and could lose himself into the music. Even if it was pop shit for Sugar.

Across the room, Ramsey was also not paying any attention to the meeting. His laser-like focus had honed in on Jono’s hands. Jono looked at Doug. First only one eyebrow was raised, but at the continued staring contest Jono’s eyes narrowed into a glare, both brows furrowing. They had chairs only a little distance from each other, both protected from the sightlines of the front by virtue of being in the back of the room. It made anything they did practically unseen.

_Wot do you want?_ , Jono asked, not stopping the movement of his fingers against the heel of his palm.

The silence went on for a little too long.

Doug raised an eyebrow, having seen the way that Jono’s forehead furrowed in confusion. “Oh…” He tapped his temple once. “Telepathy. That… doesn’t work on me.”

Jono switched to American Sign Language, his movements rusty as he painstakingly finger spelled F-U-C-K-I-N-G-P-E-R-F-E-C-T at Doug. It had been a long while since Jono had even bothered to keep up with sign language of any kind. There was a brief moment after he met this one girl… but it was short lived since he didn’t have anyone else to really use it with.

‘It has its moments,’ Doug signed back. There was a long moment where Jono watched him, gathering anger into his breast like a thundercloud. He deflated though. The righteous snit worked itself out of him. Evidently, he had grown from his teenaged years after all.

‘What did you want?’

‘Your song. I could see the language of it. It will sound good once you put it to an instrument.’

Jono nodded, not exactly getting the compliment until Doug had translated it fully from ASL to spoken English. It had taken Jono a few tries at seeing the signs, trying to memorize ‘song’, and ‘language’ and other words that he hadn’t known the signs for.

Doug’s hands were fluid, Jono noticed. His fingers went between finger spelling and signing with the ease of complete fluency, even if the expression on his face was blank as a stone. It was like watching Everett when he had synched up with Jono’s powers and used them with far more ease and fine control than Jono had ever managed. There was still this ember of anger that burned in the heart of his furnace. Jono wanted to get angry, but he couldn’t. It was too nice, conversing secretly like this, to expend the energy needed to get angry.

Summers, at the front of the room, continued to drone on in the meeting while Doug and Jono talked in the back. Jono mimed a “yapping” gesture with one hand and rolled his eyes. Doug nodded and flashed more signs, the tilt of his head taking a sardonic angle. Jono could have laughed, but as it was, he needed Doug to slow down and show him the signs again.

Doug had a fine grasp of sarcasm that shone through with every sign passed between them. Jono wished that he could smile, really smile. This was the most entertainment that he had had in ages. Doug’s wit was like a first language, even through the stilted emotions behind his fluid signing. It was like all he had to do was tilt his head, or slide his fingers a centimeter to the left and Jono found himself wanting to crack up. If the feeling was mutual, well, they weren’t in the best place to display it, lest Summers spied them not given a whit of attention to him.

They stayed like that for the rest of the meeting.


	3. Lessons and Dates

Jono proposed lessons. They spent three weeks signing back and forth at each other during meetings, miming impersonations of Summers and the other senior X-Men, to the point where Jono was grateful for once that he didn’t have a mouth. Otherwise, he’d have gotten them caught a long time ago with laughing too hard.

It was surprising that he was seeking out company. To himself as much as anyone else, of that Jono was certain. His reputation for being a loner certainly preceded him wherever he went. Yet Doug was comfortable to be around. He didn’t expect, or demand, anything more or less than what Jono was willing to give. It was a perfect set up, and Jono continued to want to spend more and more time with Doug.

It also meant more time with Warlock. The good side of this was that Warlock was wickedly clever in his own ways. He had developed some dead on impersonations to contribute to Doug and Jono’s sarcastic asides. The bad was the he was as loud as Doug was quiet. It threw Jono for a loop every time because he half expected a yellow themed, tricky character to be Jubilee and… it wasn’t. It felt like Jubilee had dropped Jono like so many hot bricks when they arrived on Utopia, finding her own niche with her friends that had been from before Gen X. Jono hadn’t had anyone but her, really. Monet was back in New York with her own team, and Paige… Well the less said about the awkwardness that occurred anytime he and Paige so much as walked into the same room together the better.

A neutral fact that came up from Warlock joining in on the sarcasm parties was that while Doug was completely immune to telepathy, Warlock was not. The alien from a planet with little that resembled Earth humans was able to receive human telepathy, but the born and raised straight-outta-the-suburbs human was not.

Jono’s life was decidedly too weird to think deeply about.

In any case, time with Warlock was willing payment for more time with Doug was something that Jono was willing to get used to. There was something between the two of them. It was more than being on the save wavelength as another person, but they generated the same wavelength together. It was this quiet thing that Jono sometimes felt he could touch and have it zap at him. A person in a sensory deprivation chamber would have been able to perceive it. Something close.

Jono wasn’t jealous. He wasn’t. He just wanted... something, anything like it. But with how Generation X had fragmented and splintered and was swept up into other bins there was no chance of that now.

It was just Jono’s damned luck that the only person he wanted to have that something with was Doug himself. Jono and Paige were still on cautious footing with each other, with too many things unspoken and broken between them. Given Jono’s horrible, _horrible_ track record with women, Jono didn’t want to tilt his friendship with Jubilee in any direction other than what they had after being in the New Warriors together, especially since… they didn’t interact much here. It was good, Jono kept trying to tell himself. It was good, and it was okay. They were around... Then he’d see everyone else and … Fuck the world.

            Anyway, lessons. Jono asked Doug to give him private lessons in sign language. Hanging out with Doug was… calming. It was a strange feeling for Jono. A welcome feeling, just strange, new. Besides, Jono did need the lessons, even if his end goal was more for the company than the actual subject matter.

Doug had readily agreed. Perhaps he wanted the extra company too? Jono could only assume. But Doug had Warlock. He had that great big, incomprehensible bond. What use could he have for a deeper bond with someone he had only just met when he had… whatever it was with Warlock.

            ‘Do you want to get out of here?’ Jono signed at Doug.

Doug looked at him with that outwardly blank expression Jono had come to realize was Doug sifting through a series of interlocking translations and context clues. Jono tried again.

‘Do you want to spend time out in the city with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Eat beforehand. Won’t be a dinner.’

So that was step one done. Jono met Doug at Utopia’s dock, dressed casual in black jeans, an old band shirt, and a leather jacket. Doug had dressed in a striped black and yellow shirt and blue jeans. It was nice how the collar of it was wide, Jono thought, making Doug look relaxed. Relaxed was a good look on Doug.

They wandered San Francisco for a little. They didn’t talk all that much, but managed to get across what was needed anyway. There was a tap on the shoulder here and there, pointing at different architecture pieces. A few hours were spent walking in a park, leaning close to each other.

Then, they stumbled on an antique shop that had a large box of records in it. Jono was instantly enamored with looking through the selection. Doug found a new language to translate in each bit and bob and frippery on the shelves. They huddled around the records, Jono kneeling down and going back and forth between signing to Doug little factoids about each one and looking through the box. He had to resort to finger-spelling and pantomime as words escaped him. The smile on Doug’s face was nearly imperceptible, yet was still gilded with honesty at watching Jono’s excitement.

“Oh! Look at them!” said a customer behind them.

Both of them turned in time to see the person badly mimic Jono’s last bit of finger spelling to their friend and laughing about it.

Jono stood up, brows furrowed into an angry line.

_Look here, fuck-face! You think it’s funny when people talk!_ Jono was incandescent in his rage. _Shove it up your arse next time you think that just because someone doesn’t hear means that they don’t notice you being a wanker._ It was only after he had looked back around to Doug that Jono realized that he spent the whole rant signing as much as he could. There were definitely words missing. Thought went faster than his fingers, but Doug could track what was said easily enough without registering the telepathy.

‘Let’s go to the next stop’ signed Doug. He reached out and took Jono’s arm in a firm grip, leading the other outside. It was as if Doug was using Jono to calibrate himself back with reality, while also giving Jono an excuse to let the vestiges of his anger to blow out.

As they walked, meandering a way back towards the boat to Utopia, they passed a smoothie truck. Jono signed for Doug to wait a moment. The earlier situation had bothered him, niggling away at the base of his brain. After all this time only a couple words were still needed to set off that damned temper of his. Well, shit. He definitely could have handled the yuppies better, but yelling always felt so cathartic. Course, he couldn’t help but feel like an ass since Doug had watched the whole thing. Hindsight sucked.

Jono ordered one smoothie. The seller grinned at him, his teeth white and shining as he said, “Sure thing, hun. Getting for you and your guy right?” The smoothie had two straws in it, perfect for sharing. Jono didn’t correct the guy on who exactly was going to end up drinking it.

‘Here,’ Jono signed before giving the smoothie to Doug, who thanked him and took a long sip, using one of the provided straws. ‘Want to do a second date?’

Doug coughed. “What?”

‘A date, a second date? Despite everything at the shop, it was … good. I’d like to do this again.’

Doug looked like he had a circuit that shorted out in his brain. His phone buzzed once, twice, three times, each more urgent than the last. A small bean key chain that hung off Doug’s phone sprouted to life, speaking with Warlock’s voice. “Selfsoulfriend would love to go on second date with selfriend Jono. Self accepts on Selfsoulfriend’s behalf.”

Three days later, Jono went to Doug’s room to pick him up, and was treated to the sight of Doug trying to dress up in a powder blue suit, and Warlock stealing Doug’s bow tie.


	4. Shovel Talk

Jono and Doug had been dating for two weeks before anyone realized that they were, in fact, dating. Well, really only one person realized.

Roberto Da Costa had a plan. However, to enact this plan he needed help in creating the most perfect speech he would need. The only person he knew that could possibly help him was, of course, Sam.

“Why, again, are you coming to me?”

“You have sisters, Sam” Roberto said, laying his crossed arms. “Why wouldn’t I come to you?”

“Bobby, if any of my sisters knew that I was gonna give one of their boyfriends the shovel talk they would’a decked me, then left me for mama to take her own shot.”

So that plan was a no go. Roberto was on his own.

Fine. He could deal with that. Just had to track down his intended victim.

“My man,” Roberto said, coming up behind Jono and slinging an arm around his shoulders. An impressive feat since Jono was about a head taller than Roberto. “I need to talk to you about something very important.”

_I’m not watching Magnum P.I._

“Noted but not convinced. Everyone should watch that show. And that’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

_I’m also not going to put an illusion on you to make you look like Tom Selleck._

“You can do that?” Roberto held up a finger to stop Jono’s response. “Wait, no, don’t answer that. What I want to say is that Doug is a good friend of mine. And I’ve been seeing that you’re becoming a good friend of his too. Just know that I will know details. All the details. I have suffered enough that I have _earned_ those details. Understand?”

_… You really suck at making a shovel talk speech, yeh know that?_

“Fuck you, Starsmore.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [love, your book will end just fine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14015217) by [GoldenThreads](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenThreads/pseuds/GoldenThreads)




End file.
